Deema Al-Sayegh, 24, was born with a hearing impairment, something that made communicating with people almost impossible. “Sometimes they had to call me many times or repeat what they said so I could understand,” she said.
“I hated it when I used to telephone to order food and couldn’t pronounce words such as ‘chicken burger’ properly.”
For Al-Sayegh, learning how to read lips came naturally. “I didn’t realize that I could read lips until I was a teenager,” she said. She studied in public schools and learned a second language at the British Council using her ability to read lips. She also took on the challenge of majoring in English linguistics and graduated with a BA degree.
“The major problem I faced during my studies was my hearing problem. I usually answered by guessing and passed my classes by luck. Sometimes people didn’t properly understand what I said, so I ended up having to explain everything slowly. But that did not stop me from delivering presentations and acting in drama classes,” she said, adding she used to deal with situations as if she did not have a problem.
She passed every obstacle until she began applying for jobs and found it difficult to be understood by prospective employers when expressing her goals and ambitions. That did not, however, stop her from applying and going for interviews and looking for other suitable jobs.
Al-Sayegh later decided to apply to the Jeddah Institute For Speech And Hearing (JISH) and not tell her prospective employer that she had hearing difficulties and was completely dependant on lip reading.
Her employer, however, realized straight away she was hard of hearing. “I immediately knew she suffered from a hearing impairment since I have three children who had the same issue. But I gave her the job because I believed she was good for the position and this issue would not affect her job,” said Sultana Alireza-Zahid, founder & chief executive director of JISH.
Al-Sayegh was given the job as a clinical and research assistant. She was also offered hearing and speech therapy at JISH and given a hearing aid, which helped her hear. “I can now speak more clearly, and I can also hear sounds I couldn’t hear before. I’m really grateful to Sultana and to everyone at JISH,” said Al-Sayegh.
Speaking about the help she was given, Danyah Kamal, speech language pathologist at JISH, “We noticed that her voice was low and she didn’t move her lips or make facial expressions when speaking, something that made her personality a bit reserved and so we later showed her how to use her body language and use different tones so people could understand her better and that boosted her confidence.”
Four months later, Al-Sayegh felt strong and confident enough to leave JISH and apply for more challenging jobs elsewhere.
